Tag Archives: advertising

As someone who takes candid pictures for a living, it is amazing to see the amount of people who are camera shy in this world. The majority who spy me with my long lens or decline my request to be photographed and give their name are women.

I find this very unappealing. I understand if you don’t want to open you heart and life up to me so I can write it all down and display it to the community on the front page of the town’s local paper.

But what’s a picture?

What’s a picture of you and your child having fun at the Strawberry Festival?

What’s a picture of you and your friends cheering at a football game?

What’s a picture of you at a socialite event in your formal best?

It really makes me sad. Sure, us women don’t always look dolled up. But just because we look natural, organic, doesn’t mean we should live in shame. Don’t ever be ashamed of your appearance.

Pictures, videos- they capture a moment in time. They’re immortal. And you are immortal in that space.

Dove’s newest campaign seeks to point that out. Sure the video is cute and playful. But it pinpoints a dark truth: When did you stop thinking you were beautiful?

It’s been 15 years since the rubenesque Ruby made her debut in The Body Shop’s ad campaign directed at teaching women to appreciate their bodies.

Since then rumors have swirled about how Barbie toy maker Matel sent a cease and desist letter to TBS, claiming that Ruby’s plastic body offended Barbie and threatened her sales. Whether or not Matel took TBS to court or even sent the letter has not been investigated into thoroughly.

However, the image of Ruby has been circulating around Pinterest as of late.

The battle of the bods isn’t a recent phenomenon. It seems that the ideal shape for a woman has fluctuated since the beginning of time.

From the constraining Victorian corset to the skeletal posture of model “Twiggy,” the pressures to fit a mold have always been present. But as we all know, women come in many shapes and sizes.

So where do these pressures come from? A male dominated society that is teaching women they need to be something they aren’t in order to sell products to women they don’t need?

Or is there a legitimate health concern on the horizon- a rising rate of obesity?

I embrace women of every size, but even to me, Ruby seems to be labeled obese, unhealthy.

However, the idea to teach women to be self confident trumps all. In order to be healthy, one must be mentally sound. If she is happy with more meat, then I am happy for her.

What do you think? Are campaign ads like TBS teaching women it’s OK to have unhealthy habits, or is it teaching women self confidence?

It’s amazing the transformation advertising has made through the decades. Now, a tv or radio ad should be 15 or 30 seconds. Check out these minutes-long vintage ads about food. Yes…they’re completely racist and sexist.

“Major brands have also jumped on the bandwagon of late. Just this past month, Anheuser-Busch (BUD) has unveiled a style-conscious 11.3-ounce “bowtie” can — it tapers inward at the middle — for its popular Budweiser brand (the traditional 12-ounce Budweiser can will also continue to be offered). MillerCoors has a commemorative series of Miller High Life cans coming out this summer that pay homage to Harley-Davidson motorcycles,” according to a Yahoo! Finance article. “Samuel Adams (SAM) has introduced what it bills as the “Sam can,” a container that’s designed with such features as a larger opening and an extended lip — all of which are intended to bring out the beer’s full flavor.”

By Amber James

Think you might have room for dessert after dinner tonight? Think again.

Although many people can look at a nutrition label and see just how much sugar it takes to make a treat sweet, there is a cloaked reality with bitter consequences. It’s called hidden sugars.

Flagler student Michelle Coark took her best guess at what hidden sugars are. “Is it a natural sugar,” she said.

Hidden sugars, or added sugars, are quite the opposite of Coark’s guess. They are sugars that don’t occur naturally in foods.

The FDA doesn’t require companies to post the added sugars on the nutrition label. Instead they are slipped into the ingredients list under strange names that the average consumer might not recognize.

Any word ending in “ose” should be a red flag, such as sucrose, glucose, lactose and fructose.

Words ending in “ol” are also sugar synonyms, like sorbitol, xylitol, mannitol and maltitol.

Since the FDA doesn’t regulate how the sugars are grouped, many advertising companies are getting away with stretching the truth and using buzzwords like “no sugar” or “no calories” to trick the consumer into thinking a product is healthier than it really is.

Many energy drinks claim to have zero sugars. 5-Hour Energy is one of these, but listed as “other ingredients” on its nutrition label are sweeteners glycerin and sucrose.

Coke Zero also markets itself as a zero calorie, zero sugar drink, but it still contains the artificial sweeteners aspartame and acesulfame k.

Coark, an English major, said she thinks the FDA should require companies to distinguish between the different sugars and keep track of the grams on a nutrition label.

“It’s like how they made cigarette [companies] put the warning label on [the package],” she said. “It’s kind of the same thing, like a silent killer.”

But a few extra grams everyday can really add up. And it adds up to spoonfuls. Americans consume about 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day.

A woman’s caloric intake should be around 2,000 calories a day. The average woman consumes 25 percent of those calories a day in added sugars. These are empty calories that she may not even know she’s consuming.

“Fructose, sucrose, all those “oses” and you think, ‘Oh my God,’ I am consuming so much sugar. It’s crazy,” Allison Dozier, a student at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, said.

Still, she said she really doesn’t care about what is in her food, and she doesn’t think a lot of college students really have time to care either.